Sweat Equity: Identifying Your Target Market

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🎯Identifying your target market
Tackling the Coronavirus
The benefits of branded apps
Interview with David Donatucci 💬

So far, 2020 has kept us on the edge of our seats – epidemics, man-made disasters, stock market woes, and polarizing elections. And, if running a business isn’t demanding enough, as fitness professionals, we often bear the concerns of our clients, staff, and communities. While keeping one eye on local and national happenings, laser-focus your other eye on your business. Allow uncertainty to give way to the creativity of an entrepreneurial spirit. It’s often in the face of unknowns that we imagine with more profundity and execute with more precision.

New This Week: Identifying your target market… Tackling the Coronavirus… Branded app benefits… Member retention metrics… Interview with the director of The Florida Institute of Performance, David Donatucci

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Table of Contents

Identifying Your Target Market

Attract your target audience with these simple steps

How Do I Identify My Client Population?

In our previous two issues, we discussed business strategy and social media for business growth; this week we’ll break down how to identify your fitness business’s target market and competition. Identifying your target market helps you understand who is most likely to purchase your fitness service or product.

In order to better understand who your industry competitors are, you must begin by honing in on your business’s market; what types of clients are you targeting and in which niche of the fitness industry do your services fall?

We looked to Origym’s personal trainer business plan to help answer these questions:

The fitness industry is deep and wide, with new trends and technology emerging daily. So where does your business fit? And where are your potential clients situated? The best way to begin unpacking an answer is to imagine your ideal client. What are this person’s demographics, needs, and goals? The examples above can help you jump-start defining your ideal client.

“When isolating a niche, that does not mean that you have to exclusively work within that parameter. It just shows that you are identifying a possible opportunity within the market that you are going to try and exploit and resonate with.”

How Do I Identify My Competition?

This question can feel equally as incalculable as the former. Performing a SWOT analysis for both your business and your closest competitors can help you gain meaningful insight into your market’s situation. What are the strengths of services and providers within your niche and what are their weaknesses (or deficiencies)? Check-out your competitors’ website and social media pages. What are they promoting? And don’t forget customer reviews–easy access to insight about what your competitors are getting right, and, what they’re not.

Related: HBRS’s Are Your Company’s Strengths Really Weaknesses?

“When writing your personal trainer business plan you need to consider the alternatives to your service and how those alternatives influence your target market’s buying decisions.”

The Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Statistics is an interesting read of on-the-rise entrepreneurs.

The Personal Trainer’s Guide to the Coronavirus

Stay diligent, wash your hands, and utilize online coaching

Don’t Panic, but Be Punctual

Gyms and fitness centers are known for battling infectious diseases such as MRSA, Norovirus, Hepatitis A, and Athlete’s Foot, but have you considered preemptive measures against new types of infections? The Coronavirus (COVID-19) is successfully making its way around the globe and is now making news across the US. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), here’s what you need to know to reduce the chance of infection for yourself and your clients.

Chances are you’re feeling a little anxious about the possible threat the Coronavirus poses for your fitness business. Might you experience a noticeable decrease in revenue if clients and prospects stay home?

Fret not! Instead, take advantage of this opportunity to establish (or beef-up) your business’s online personal training services. Then, if you encounter a period when your clients chose to work out at home, you’ll be ready to transition their training programs. Who knows? You might even find yourself tapping into a new market.

For more information on how you can prepare your gym for COVID-19, check out our article, Gyms and Coronavirus (Safety, Tips, & Risks).

Then, demo Exercise.com’s fitness business management software to see how we can help you train your clients from the comfort of their own homes. Click here to learn more!

Branded App Benefits

Increase client retention with branded apps

The Numbers Speak for Themselves: Branded App Work

A branded app not only allows you to offer your clients a personalized experience, but an app’s digital marketing capabilities can also reach new clients and increase revenue. With the help of an app’s data-tracking capabilities, you can analyze your business’s target audience, gaining that much-coveted insight into your target audience’s needs, profiles, and demographics.

BuildFire’s Mobile App Download and Usage Statistics (2019) and [2019] Mobile Ecommerce: Revenue, Usage, and Statistics provide a motivating data break-down of who’s downloading what and why:

82% of Internet users in the United States have used a mobile device to shop online
35% of US consumers use only their mobile device to buy online
In 2017, the US had $156 billion in mobile commerce sales
By 2021, experts estimate that US mobile commerce sales will eclipse $420 billion
Conversion rates from mobile apps are three times higher than mobile sites
Mobile shoppers spend twice as much money as other customers
53% of smartphone users buy from company-specific apps
42% of smartphone users plan to do more shopping from their mobile devices in the coming year

5 Benefits of Branded Apps

Client management and engagement: An app’s features can streamline client management and program delivery. You can interact with clients in real-time as well.
Business branding and reputation: With a branded app your business maximizes its visibility. When your brand is easily recognizable within your niche, it becomes a trusted source and you become the expert. And once your app is in app stores, your brand’s exposure multiplies (and so will your sales).
Competitive advantage and business analytics: Tracking user engagement and sales provides essential data about your business’s performance. With the use of business apps on the rise, a branded app will secure a competitive position in your industry.
Productivity and social media marketing: Integrating your app with your social media accounts will engage an even larger audience.
eCommerce: Maintain or introduce new products and/or services to add revenue streams.

And what about actual revenue generated from mobile app engagement?

You may be thinking, “but I already have a website, isn’t that enough?” The quick answer is no, and here are several reasons why: 1) mobile users outnumber desktop users, 2) mobile apps offer personalization, 3) in-app and push notifications are more effective than email, 4) apps operate more quickly than websites, and 5) most apps have content available in an offline mode. Still not sure? Read the full article, 10 Reasons Why Apps are Better.

Online Training Programs

What are the critical elements of an online training program?

Training Types

In February we took a look at the surge in people participating in online personal training, with the two top factors being convenience and cost. So what are the elements of a stellar online training program? First, it’s important to determine what types of clients you want to train—what is your niche?

Here are four training types to consider when creating your online training program:

Private Personalized Online Training
Hybrid Online and In-Person Personal Training
Live Video Chat Workouts Online
Online Group Personal Training

Generate income by offering online group training subscriptions. Put recurring revenue on autopilot! Set up a member’s workout journey, and let our software take it from there by automatically releasing training plans, files, videos, and more. #exercisecom pic.twitter.com/36mVC8njgZ

— Exercise.com (@exercise) February 28, 2020

Program Styling

Templates: workout templates per client type with 3-4 phases (5 workouts/wk; repeat each phase for one month)
Instruction: include written and video instructions (sets, reps, weight, rest)
Delivery: online service (Zapier) to automate delivery

Once again, automation is the key to efficiency and dependability. In our last newsletter, we shared some tips regarding business automation. If you’re using a custom branded app to run your fitness business, then you’re probably already experiencing the advantage of automated solutions.

The PTDC also offers some great tips for building an online training program in their article How to Get Started as an Online Personal Trainer. And, don’t forget, Exercise.com’s software provides trainers with the ability to create their own workout programs that can be sent to anyone in the world. Request a demo now by filling out the form below!

Start your online training today with Exercise.com

Member Retention

Corporate vs. single memberships

Do Employer-Sponsored Gym Memberships Work?

Medium conducted a study assessing corporate memberships in the gym/health slub sector, and the findings were rather interesting. Although corporate memberships only make up about 2% of total memberships, employees participating in a corporate membership had a 15%-higher monthly usage than their non-corporate counterparts.

With that said, how many employees are actually receiving (and utilizing) employer-sponsored gym membership benefits? The number is shockingly low. Medium’s study determined that 8% of the workforce has taken advantage of corporate memberships, with a little less than half of that population actually using their membership:

4 Key Takeaways

Go ahead! Build corporate memberships with businesses in your community
Follow-up with inactive corporate membership participants; offer incentives for corporate membership participants to bring fellow co-workers
Showcase (market!) your club and services to your corporate partner businesses; make sure potential corporate members are in-the-know with an open house or PR event just for them
Welcome new hires as a part of the corporate partner’s new employee onboarding

13 CORPORATE FITNESS PROGRAMS THAT LEAD THE PACK gives great insight into which fitness and wellness businesses are leading the way in corporate membership engagement.

And this article details what factors companies are considering before choosing a corporate fitness partner.

The Evolution of Training Professional Athletes With David Donatucci

Our Editor-in-Chief, Mathew Sims, sits down with David Donatucci, Director, The Florida Institute of Performance, to discuss how to balance training athletes and running a business.

Notable quotes:

“…the biggest change for me is utilizing the exercise.com platform. I’ve been able to really keep tabs on my athletes a whole lot better and making sure that they’re doing some things. So the online platform that we have created and have developed was the necessary portion to have for my athletes that travel a lot.”
“And there’s a lot of times throughout the day that we may create a new exercise. You know, ‘Hey, this might be good for him. Oh well, he’s on the road. Okay well, let’s videotape it.’ We load it in there and say, ‘Okay, hey try this workout for you.’”
“So it’s been great for us to really make sure that when the athletes come back, I don’t want to say as fresh as they were, but we’re not starting all over again. We have a pretty good foundation that’s still there, that we can keep with them and keep that moving forward and keep progressing them along the way.”

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